The protest was handed to Estonia's chargé d'affaires in Moscow, Marek Ühtegi, over the removal of the monument in Jõgeveste, near Tõrva.

"The Estonian authorities continue their blasphemous policy of destroying Soviet memorial heritage. This time, in the village of Jõgeveste in Valga County, a monument has been destroyed that liberated Estonia from the Nazis during the Great Patriotic War," Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said in a statement issued Friday.

The fate of the human remains exhumed at the Jõgeveste site remains unknown, Zakharova went on. "There is no publicly available information about their exhumation or reburial location. Descendants are in the dark about the whereabouts of their grandfathers and great-grandfathers."

"In this regard, a strong protest has been lodged with the Estonian Chargé d'Affaires in Russia, M. Ühtegi," Zakharova added.

Estonian War Museum (Eesti Sõjamuuseum) data states the mass grave in Jõgeveste contains the remains of 795 Soviet soldiers, the bulk of them (726) identified by name. These had been interred at the site after the war.

In her statement, Zakharova also referenced Field Marshal Barclay de Tolly, a Baltic German noble of Scottish ancestry, who commanded Russian forces at the 1812 Battle of Borodino during the Napoleonic Wars. Zakharova said de Tolly's actions saved the army from defeat, an army which went on to spearhead combined European forces which ultimately fought their way to Paris, she added.

The statement noted that the Red Army soldiers had been interred "a few meters from de Tolly's tomb," a mausoleum established in 1823.

Zakharova also referred to the activities of the Estonian Waffen-SS units during World War Two and "neo-Nazi" activities in Estonia in the present day. She also referenced a Government Office working party established in 2022 by then Prime Minister Kaja Kallas, which had cataloged 322 Soviet monuments, earmarked for relocation or removal. All human remains found at these sites have been reinterred in cemeteries, a project overseen by the war museum.

The Jõgeveste memorial was removed a few weeks ago and, according to the war museum, the remains are currently being analyzed ahead of being re-interred at a suitable site.

The legacy of Soviet monuments and other installations in the public space have been in focus since the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, in Estonia and in several other European countries which were occupied by the Soviet Union during or after the war.

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